Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800

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Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800 is written by Khaled El-Rouayheb and published by University of Chicago Press. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 0226729907 (ISBN 10) and 9780226729909 (ISBN 13).

Attitudes toward homosexuality in the pre-modern Arab-Islamic world are commonly depicted as schizophrenic—visible and tolerated on one hand, prohibited by Islam on the other. Khaled El-Rouayheb argues that this apparent paradox is based on the anachronistic assumption that homosexuality is a timeless, self-evident fact to which a particular culture reacts with some degree of tolerance or intolerance. Drawing on poetry, biographical literature, medicine, dream interpretation, and Islamic texts, he shows that the culture of the period lacked the concept of homosexuality.